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And We Sailed the Seven Seas
There are defining points in life. In the spring of 1964 I travelled by train almost the entire length of Britain, from the Scottish borders to Barry Docks in Wales. There I joined the MV Firth Fisher from Hull, with a full load of somewhat dodgy explosives, for a momentous voyage up the rather rough Irish Sea to Larne in Northern Island and back again. They were ten days which I have not forgotten and they were never to be repeated. This was partly because that ship subsequently sank without trace. Fortunately, I had disembarked from it by then. Had I been a little clumsy in my handling of the cargo, it might have gone to the bottom several years earlier.
Bookstalls and bookshops are dangerous places for me. I cannot resist buying things in them. So it was that I was irrestitibly drawn to the literature table at the Autumn Bazaar and, lo and behold, there before my eyes was one of those Anorak's almanacs, an Ian Allen ship spotters' manual. Not being a keen fan of dirty British coasters with their smokestacks steaming (believe it or not, someone had originally forked out half a crown for it), I was about to discard it when I found within its pages a photograph of the self-same Firth Fisher. It was like discovering an old friend. Immediately my mind went back over forty years to the days of my youth, when I was keen and able and remarkably fit. How little did I realise, as we pitched and tossed on the turbulent sea, what life was to have in store for me. The world, it seemed, was my oyster. There was not a thought in my mind of ever becoming a teacher or a priest, or anything else but a soldier.
As we approach the Epiphany, can we imagine what was in the minds of the Magi as they gazed at the infant Jesus? Could they ever know how that child's life was to develop? Could Mary and Joseph have any idea of the influence he was to have on us all?
My short time on the Firth Fisher was a defining moment in my life. After that things began to change inexorably. The Epiphany, a feast ignored by many, was a defining moment in history; after it, nothing would ever be the same again.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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